For many, it is hard to believe that as late as 1954, schools, universities, buses, water fountains, restroom facilities, restaurants, the whole social structure in the South was segregated.  Separate facilities of all of the above were the norm. This was perpetuated on the premise that they were “separate but equal.” The famous 1954 decision by the United States Supreme Court, “Brown v. Board of Education,” changed all of that but the transition to integration did not occur overnight.  In fact, the real effects of court-mandated integration were still barely discernible in many areas of the Deep South even a decade later.

 

            The city of Lafayette, Louisiana, located on Interstate 10 roughly between New Orleans and Houston is the home of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (ULL). The current population of the city and its environs is nearing 200,000. Fifty years ago it was more like 35,000.  

In 1954 the university was named Southwestern Louisiana Institute (SLI) and its student body numbered just over 6,000.  The name was changed in 1960 to the University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL) and again to ULL in 1999. The student population in 2007 was over 17,000.

            Under the guidance of some far-sighted and courageous leaders, black and white, SLI was the first all-white university in the entire South to accept undergraduate African-American students. The integration of the student body was achieved quietly and peacefully.  Many have credited the relatively calm transition to the demographic makeup of the city and the area around it known as Acadiana.  A large majority of the residents are of French, Catholic heritage.  Their ancestors were victims of British discrimination, oppression and exile in the 18^th century and thus the descendants were more empathetic to the black community than most. 

            The black population in Lafayette and Acadiana had been fairly well assimilated over the years.  Partly responsible was the fact that the poor Acadians, or “Cajuns” as they came to be known, mostly worked side by side with the black laborers in the agriculture based economy of the area. There had also been considerable interracial social mixing over the years that produced many Afro-American families with French surnames and light complexions who practiced the Catholic religion.

            In addition, by the mid 1950’s, the oil and gas industry had attracted an influx of hard driving, ambitious drillers and geologists who brought another distinct culture to the area.  They too were openly accepted and embraced by the native population.

            School integration was not totally without tension, but it was achieved without violence, without sit-ins and without law-enforcement interference. 

            Still, by 1965 there was not one Afro-American athlete under scholarship or participating in NCAA sports in any of the states of the Deep South.  With his roots in the hills of Tennessee,  Beryl Shipley, the fiery, red-haired, head basketball coach of the University of Southwestern Louisiana Bulldogs changed all that.  Those changes produced some of the most exciting college sports moments ever witnessed in Louisiana.  They also produced great resentment and even hatred within the university and athletic community in the state and they ultimately led to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) eliminating the basketball program with an unprecedented suspension, or “death penalty” of two years.

            Coach Shipley, aided by the research and writing skills of his older brother Tom, reveals in this book, for the first time, the questionable procedures and allegations of the NCAA.  Through newly discovered documents, dating back three decades, they show the NCAA’s actions abetting those of the racially motivated Louisiana State Board of Education and other segregationists in the ‘60’s and early ‘70’s who were determined to punish those responsible for integrating athletics in the state.

             Beryl Shipley, a robust 81 years old at this writing, with a distinct echo of the Tennessee hills in his speech, has nurtured the burning desire through the years to have this story told as it was never told during the events that transpired.

 This is that story.  Admittedly, there is a lingering bitterness in what the coach believes to be a miscarriage of justice.  Some persons may take exception to the relating of some events in the manuscript, but it is all told based on solid research and corroborated memories.